1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a system for data synchronization. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and a system for concurrently supporting network sharing and data synchronization.
2. Description of Related Art
The most popular general purpose mobile devices include two major categories, namely notebook personal computers (PC) and personal digital assistants (PDA). Notebook PCs adopt x86 architecture and non-embedded OS (e.g. Microsoft Windows OS), which have higher computing power and consume more electric energy. PDAs adopt embedded architecture and embedded OS (e.g. Microsoft Windows Mobile OS), which have lower computing power and consume less electric energy.
The embedded OS has both network access capability and electronic commercial capability. Referring to FIG. 1, when the non-embedded OS 110 connects to the embedded OS 120 through universal serial bus (USB) interfaces 115 and 125, the embedded OS 120 shares the network access ability to the non-embedded OS 110 by using the network sharing module 121 and USB interfaces 125 and 115. Besides, while the data synchronization software such as Microsoft ActiveSync is installed in the embedded OS 120 and the non-embedded OS 110, the purpose of synchronizing electronic commercial data (e.g. telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of contact persons, to-do lists, e-mails, schedules, and any other data involved with activities in modern offices) of the two operating systems 110 and 120 can be achieved by the connection of USB interfaces 115 and 125.
However, the non-embedded OS 110 can connect to the network only if the network driving module 111 and the network sharing module 121 are connected to each other through USB interfaces 115 and 125. On the other hand, the data synchronization between the two operating systems 110 and 120 can be achieved only if the data synchronization software 113 and 123 are connected to each other through the USB interfaces 115 and 125. As shown in FIG. 1, the network driving module 111 and the data synchronization software 113 of the non-embedded OS 110 can not connect to the USB interface 115 at the same time, and the network sharing module 121 and the data synchronization software 123 can not connect to the USB interface 125 at the same time either. As a result, the embedded OS 120 can not provide the abilities of network sharing and data synchronization to the non-embedded OS 110 at the same time. This problem brings about a lot of inconvenience. For example, if the user just receives an e-mail in one of the two operating systems and wants to synchronizes the e-mail with the other OS, he has to disable the network access first. And if the user wants to continue the network access, he has to postpone the data synchronization.